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Google held its first travel industry get-together last week at the AGO, where industry insiders could talk about travel, technology, and how to use one to sell the other. Lots of interesting titbits came out of Travel Think. Did you know that in the U.S., 70 per cent of the hotels are chains, while in Canada, 70 per cent are independent?

But the biggest one, at least for those of us who are all excited about those cool travel apps that have been popping up everywhere, letting us blog on the road from our phones, and take pictures of buildings and get instant histories, is that Canadians aren’t using them.

According to Douglas Quinby, a senior director at U.S. travel research firm Phocuswright, 77 per cent of Canadians do not take any web-enabled phones with them on vacation.

Though Quinby said he didn’t look into the causes, he said he was pretty sure it had something to do with the fact that there’s less competition in Canadian telecommunications. The apps may be free (or 99 cents), but if it costs a fortune to use them — I just got dinged for an extra $240 by Rogers on my latest bill for just four days in the States — I don’t blame anyone for leaving them at home.

RIM launches BlackBerry Travel “superapp”

Ever hopeful, RIM and World Mate have joined forces to create BlackBerry Travel, a superapp developed from World Mate’s popular eponymous app.

To be fair, business travellers bring their phones along, and use them, a lot more when they travel than tourists do, so the sector is, as the business folks say, more robust.

Its chief asset is its simplicity. It does the World Mate one better on the click-count front, reducing the number of times you need to click your phone to get at what you want. And that’s the real news. Apps have to be simple for people to use them. Those little buttons and pads are far too fussy for us to dive too deeply into these things. So the fact that these two major mobile travel players are whittling their offerings down is good news. If it works. (I’ll write a review of it once I’ve had a chance to test it on a trip I’m taking tomorrow.)

ALL-SUITE RIVER CRUISES COME TO EUROPE

People take cruises for the same reason they go to all-inclusive resorts: the leisure, and the luxury. Up until now, river cruises have been the aristocratic country cousins to the seagoing socialites. They’ve been leisurely, all right, but their luxury has been of the low-key variety. But while these long and low ships are never going to have the soaring pavilions and multi-storey waterslides that the ocean-going monsters do, they did just up the ante this past month when Avalon christened the Panorama, a 443-foot long “all-suite” ship.

The Panorama will cruise the Danube, the Main and the Rhine offering more space and what they’re calling Open-Air Balconies, sliding full-length windows that open your entire bedroom up to the rivers as they lope by.

It’s a first for Europe, and an increasingly easy alternative to the mega-cruise.

CRIME DROPS IN JAMAICA?

After his speech at a recent Caribbean tourism conference, host tourism minister, Jamaica’s Edmund Bartlett, spoke with me briefly about the future of tourism in the Caribbean in general, and Jamaica in particular. He didn’t come up with much other than the usual ministerial platitudes about new horizons and building on solid traditions, but just as he was turning to talk to some people with better suits than me, he dropped this little morsel: “Our murder rate is down 44 per cent, you know. That’s very good.”

That is very good. Of course, down 44 per cent from the 2010 rate of a little more than 1,400 still makes a sizable number. To be fair, that’s mostly in Kingston, and mostly drug-war related, though there was a woman shot in a taxi in February in the popular resort area of Montego Bay.

But lower murder rates — the reduction is mostly attributable to the capture an extradition of crime boss Dudus Coke last year — does mean things may be looking up for this troubled paradise.

JAMAICAN LOUNGE UPDATE

Several people wrote in wanting more information about the new passenger lounges at Jamaica’s two major international airports. I called David Hall, the CEO at VIP Attractions, which operates the lounges, who filled me in.

It’s $30 for a day pass, $575 for an annual pass, $865 for an annual family pass. It’s all very new, and the website ( www.vipattractions.com) is not fully functional yet, so you’ll have to buy the passes at the airports themselves for the moment, though it is free if your fly business or first on a partner airline (including Caribbean Airlines, Virgin and BA) you’re a Priority Pass ( www.prioritypass.com), Lounge Pass ( www.loungepass.com) or Airport Angel ( www.airportangel.co.uk) member, or if you have a Diner’s Club card. You currently get escorted, front-of-the-line service for departures, and Hall says they’re working on adding the same for arrivals, as well.

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